The Fantasy of Photographic and Audio ‘Enhancement’

Catching up on my RSS feeds this morning, I came across this post on the great security blog Security Generation. The author points to his pet peeve, the oft-repeated but highly-problematic TV and movie trope of photographic enhancement. His beef is that it is impossible. An image (or recording) is not some fractal in which infinitely extract higher and higher resolution. The data is finite, and it is limited by the media. There is only so much detail you can squeeze out. In this montage, YouTube user dunk3d takes a poke this idea:

I have wasted an embarrassing amount of time watching 90% of those. In fact, one or two will likely make it into my dissertation–if I ever finish that bastard document. All of them are all guilty of indulging this fantasy. What I find interesting is that in all of them the fantasy is mediated with computers, another layer of mystery (for the average person) to add credulity to it.

However, the computer is not the start of the fantasy. There are some interesting critiques of this fantasy of ‘enhancement’ that occurred way before the present pseudo-digital, CSI-obsessed era. The 1966 film Blowup explores the idea of ‘enhancing’ a photo beyond what is possible. It is a very weird but interesting movie, which inspired a bunch of films that did the same thing but with audio such as the 1981 film Blow Out. In the case of Blowup, the audience is left to wonder whether the pictures were ever even taken in the first place. The difference between it and the shows represented in dunk3d’s montage is director Michelangelo Antonioni problematizes rather than promotes the fantasy.

“If by chance you were to ask me which ornaments I would desire above all others in my house, I would reply, without much pause for reflection, arms and books.”
—Fra Sabba da Castiglione, Knight of St. John